Schools may get nearly $2 million less in state funding for buses

January 19, 2013|By Karen Yi, Sun Sentinel

More bad news for Broward schools: The transportation department could get $1.8 million less than projected in state funding and overspent its budget by almost half a million dollars this quarter, officials learned Tuesday.

The news comes after months of hard work by district officials to fix the department, which has been consistently over budget, struggled with excessive overtime rates and grappled with disastrous service at the beginning of the school year.

Still, Superintendent Robert Runcie said the department is on the right track. Because $14 million was cut from the transportation budget compared to last year, "going over budget is going to be a savings from where we were before," he said.

He said the district would discuss the state funding impact at a later workshop because he had not had time to review it.

Board member Nora Rupert, who brought the state funding numbers to the board's attention, remained troubled. "This is like a sinking ship," she said, "Shame on us."

But board member Donna Korn said though she was disappointed, it was important for the district to assess how big an impact these numbers would have.

The department may have taken in less than projected because of either decreased ridership or misreported numbers, Korn said. She added it wouldn't really be a loss of state funding if the department was actually serving fewer students and spending less money.

In a related matter, questions about a $5.7 million contract that would allow the district to buy new school buses prompted the board Tuesday to postpone it.

Even though they had agreed last month to modernize the fleet, board members said district officials had not provided enough information about the contract.

"It's a crazy amount of money with not a lot of backup right now," said Rupert.